Leading British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
